The Art of Diplomatic Lying
by Here But Not For Long
Summary: In which a simple Torchwood mission and a sudden plague outbreak threaten Rose's life. "It's too early for a cure. This is up to her now."


It's supposed to be an easy mission. That's what they tell her. Barely a mission at all.

The princess of Uxan is recovered after being kidnapped and hidden on Earth. Torchwood has very little trouble locating her and rescuing her, and now all that remains is to bring her home. They send Rose Tyler because she knows the princess best after leading her rescue mission. Safely deliver the princess, represent Torchwood and Earth at the celebration festival for three or four days, and teleport home. No fighting necessary. No sneaking around, and she won't need backup or a partner and there is certainly no cause for bringing weapons... She eventually comes to realize after all is said and done that this was for the best. Someone else may not end up as lucky as she finds herself to be.

They don't take into account the unexpected plague that starts at the festival and spreads like wildfire. Rashes, drops in blood pressure resulting in fainting, and low-grade fevers affect the Uxanites, proving the plague to be a minor and short-lived if annoying illness. No one realizes until Rose hits the ground, too, and doesn't get back up that the airborne illness will affect her human body far differently.

* * *

She thrashes in her sleep, feverish and plagued by nonsensical but disturbing nightmares. They shake her but she's already awoken on her own, delirious. Faces swim above her bleary eyes, the subtle shades of lilac unique to the Uxanites blurring together and forming a dizzying purple tent above her. She squints, her diseased mind wondering why the sky has changed colors.

She coughs then. Her body spasms. It ends after a moment, leaving her weak. It's shaken her partly out of the dream world she's still living in even though she's awake, however, and she's able to focus her gaze somewhat. A concerned face, a kind one, dances into sight. She can see the lips move, hear a soft voice shooing away the others. It asks if she needs anything. She watches the mouth form the words, and she is too mesmerized to reply. The question is repeated.

"Doctor," she croaks finally.

"I _am_ the doctor, child," the voice tells her patiently. It doesn't understand. She doesn't know how to ask differently, so she gives up, allowing her eyes to drift shut once more.

There's silence for a long moment, stillness, before she feels something pressed to her lips. She opens them obediently as soon as her jaw follows her command, and she feels something cold and wet running over neglected lips and teeth and tongue and spilling over her chin. She splutters, choking, but some of the drink makes its way to the right place and she is grateful for the way it feels. Not much feels nice right now, but the drink- not water, she thinks with a vague hint of curiosity, but something similar- cools her aching throat as it goes down.

Swallowing exhausts her, however, and she sleeps again.

* * *

The second time she awakes, it's a good deal darker. _Nighttime_ , her slow brain supplies helpfully. She's not in a bed this time, nor is she indoors, and she's moving but not of her own devices. Her head lolls to the side and she sees a strangely textured ground beneath someone's feet as they walk. Struggling to turn her face up again, she sees a fierce purple face- fierce but not frightening, somehow friendly despite its sharp features. Uxanite, she realizes after a short pause, finally connecting the purple face with the soft, cracking ground. She's on Uxan.

She remembers this but doesn't know what to do with the information now that she has it. As they move- she recognizes now that she's being carried- memories start filtering in through the haze of fever. The princess, clearly terrified but defiant as they burst into her makeshift cell to rescue her. She drops the rusty pipe she's holding as she realizes that they're friends, not foes.

The Grand Court of Nenilisch, Uxan's capital city. The bows she receives even after she leaves the side of the princess. The Uxanites afford her great respect, extraordinarily grateful to her for her safe return of a beloved member of their royal family.

The festival set up to honor the princess's return. Colorful food dotting every table- no, every _surface_ as everyone from the nobles to the farmers celebrate in the streets. The awareness of someone dropping to the ground out of the corner of her eye. The alarm as suddenly everyone is falling. The further alarm she feels as her own body betrays her, a flash of heat searing her cells and a weakness taking over as she, too, meets the oozing ground face first.

The _plague_.

As she remembers, she feels a vague sense of distress for the first time since falling ill. Is she dying? She can't be sure.

The wondering leaves her drained, and as she feels sleep creeping up, she willingly relinquishes her hold on the waking world.

* * *

 _She's in more of a rush than usual as she gets home because she needs to pack. She and the princess are departing tonight, and she expects to be on Uxan for around three days. She roots through the closet, selecting items based on the climate in Nenilisch during their equivalent of summer, and hoists her bag onto her shoulder._

 _She runs smack into the Doctor as she leaves the bedroom. She stumbles back a step and his hands shoot out to grab her waist automatically, steadying her. They both laugh and she slowly rights herself, but his hands don't leave her body. Instead, they slide around to her back, drawing her into a soft hug. She leans into it happily, pressing a lazy kiss to his clothed shoulder._

 _She's in a hurry, but she won't rush this goodbye, even if it_ is _just for a few days._

 _"I thought I was going to have to go down to the lab to get to see you before I left!" she chastises lightly, though her voice is teasing._

 _The Doctor gives a low, embarrassed chuckle, and she imagines that his hand would be rising to the back of his head if it wasn't currently stroking tiny circles into her back. "Been a bit into the Ibeliss genome project, I suppose. You've noticed, have you?"_

 _"Third day in a row you've texted to tell me you were taking the tube home and not to wait up. Of course I noticed," she says, pulling back to smirk at him._

 _He drops a kiss to her lips and grins. He'd been rueful before, acting a little like Tony when caught adding_ another _spoon of sugar to his tea, but now he's all casual arrogance. "You missed me." It's not a question. It's a smug statement of fact._

 _"Not as much as you're about to miss me!" she sing-songs, wriggling her eyebrows._

 _To her surprise, his expression falls, turning into resigned disappointment. "I heard about the Uxanite princess. I suppose you're leaving now?" She thinks he may have been choosing to ignore the fact that she just said "before I left."_

 _"I am," she confirms._

 _He nods. She can tell he's not thrilled about it. Honestly, she understands; it's been too long since they last shared an off-world adventure. The TARDIS will be ready for interplanetary travel soon, though, and then they'll definitely make it a point to explore together again. She knows he aches to go with her, but they both know that the Ibeliss project is both vital and time-sensitive._

 _She also understands not wanting to part. That's not her favorite thing, either._

 _"I've got to get going," she hints when he doesn't move to let her go. He nods again, his arms tightening, and she rolls her eyes before closing them and rising on her tiptoes to give him a thorough see-you-later snog. This immediately pulls him from his pouting, and he returns the kiss with great enthusiasm._

 _She pulls away when her phone starts to ring, and she doesn't have to look at it to know that it's Jake, calling in irritation to ask what's taking her so long to pack a bloody weekend bag._

 _"I love you," she murmurs as she breaks out of the Doctor's embrace entirely, beginning to walk toward the entryway and the front door. "Back in four days, tops. I'll see you soon!"_

 _"Not if I see you first," the Doctor replies, and even if she isn't looking at him anymore, she knows he's smiling again, can hear it in his voice._

 _If she'd known the likelihood that this was her last opportunity to see him before meeting her death, she'd have kissed him a little harder and emphasized her affection a little more thoroughly._

* * *

The third time she wakes up, she can't open her eyes at all. She carefully tests her whole body, and nothing moves as instructed. She can vaguely feel her chest rising and falling, however, so that's something.

There's a steady beeping sound coming from somewhere above her. She thinks it sounds mechanical, and eventually she comes to recognize it as the tone of something medical, perhaps a heart monitor. _Good_ , she thinks. So, she's breathing _and_ her heart is functioning. That's something, too.

She's started trying to move her fingers again (with minimal success) when she starts to hear voices filtering through her cotton ears. The voices are faint and growing louder.

"... this godforsaken century at all!" She recognizes this as the Doctor's voice.

"Well, how were they supposed to know?" This voice belongs to her mother. "Pete says they've only recently made contact with Uxan at all... And I think you're forgetting that not everyone knows the future as well as they know the past, you plum. Or are we all supposed to be time-travelers now, too?" Jackie's tone is that of someone who was once patient but has been arguing with a wall for too long. The last part is borderline snappy.

"Someone should have asked me!" the Doctor cries, obviously frustrated. She can clearly imagine his hair standing on end; this sounds like the kind of argument that results in the compulsive and rough running of hands through hair.

"Oh, Torchwood doesn't revolve around you!" Yes, Jackie has definitely lost her patience with him.

"Like you said, I'm the only one with future knowledge," the Doctor retorts waspishly.

"You said it yourself," Jackie points out, irritated and making sure he knows it with her elevated volume. "The plague doesn't happen on Uxan in the old universe for seventy-five more years. You wouldn't've seen any problem with sending Rose there, even if someone _had_ asked you. For a supposed genius, you sure are thick!"

The voices are loud now, close.

"I could have at least brought up the possibility of-" the Doctor's voice stops so suddenly that she thinks for a moment that her ears have failed her.

No, now she can hear footsteps, quick at first and drawing closer and then faltering and stopping. She can hear him breathing roughly, thinks he's standing close but she can feel that he's not touching her.

"She's still breathing, Doctor," Jackie says softly. Her voice isn't as close as the Doctor seems to be, though Rose thinks she's in the room. "She's not d- she's still breathing."

Rose wonders as much as the other two surely do how long that will last.

"She's so pale." This is murmured almost inaudibly. The Doctor is nearly a thousand years old, but right now he sounds so lost that his voice could belong to a child.

"You said that in our universe, the survival rate for humans was-"

"Around half," the Doctor answers, cutting Jackie off.

"When you say around... More or less than half, Doctor?" Jackie sounds hesitant, like she's afraid of the answer she'll receive.

"Approximately forty-eight percent were able to fight off the infection and fully recover. That statistic increased to ninety-seven percent when the cure was discovered seventeen years later." His voice is clinical now. She thinks he may be trying to distance himself, but she knows him well enough to suspect that it won't work. "It's too early for a cure. This is up to her now."

There's silence for a few minutes, and Rose is just starting to drift off again when Jackie speaks. "They, er, they gave me her things... including her phone. There was an unsent text, to you. You were the last person she tried to talk to."

"Don't talk about her like she's dead," the Doctor snaps. Silence again, and then: "What does the text say?"

There's a pause in which Jackie presumably digs for Rose's phone and opens the texting app. " _'They've got a wonky banana casserole thing here,'_ " Jackie reads. " _'It's disgusting and you'd love it. It's a fun festival, but better with-'_ " Another pause. "That's all it says, sweetheart. Didn't get sent. She probably didn't get to finish typing it."

There's a loose sob that comes from the Doctor, surprising Rose. Then he's finally touching her, his hand sliding along her cheek as if it's made of porcelain. "I can't lose her, Jackie," he breathes. Though he says her mum's name, Rose is sure he's essentially speaking to himself. This isn't the sort of thing he'd usually share with her mother, of all people. "She's all I've got left. I can't lose her."

"You've got us," Jackie replies, her voice heavy with grief and fear, but that makes her all the more fervent for it nonetheless. Then there are footsteps that recede. Apparently, Jackie has left her and the Doctor alone.

The footsteps have faded by the time she hears him start to cry. "Better with two," he whispers.

* * *

From there, she isn't lucid enough to hear whole conversations, and she seems to have lost the tiny finger twitches she'd accomplished before.

She drifts in and out of troubled sleep, her only real indications of her own risings and fallings in health being the speed of the heart monitor's beeping and the snippets of conversations that she manages to tune into; she can never stay awake for more than a few words, and awake is a relative term.

Another nightmare, rising into consciousness to hear an accelerated heart rate registering on the beeping machinery.

"-the same idiot who wouldn't let me see her?" An angry voice, the Doctor's.

"We didn't know if she was contagious!" A voice she doesn't recognize.

"And what's your excuse now?"

Rose isn't awake to hear the answer.

"Wake up and play with me!" Tony is whinging right in her ear and tugging on her arm as she groggily tunes in. " _Rose_ , this is so _boring_. Stop sleeping and _play Ninja Turtles with me_." Back to sleep.

The next time, there are no voices and her heart rate is slow. Dangerously slow, the thinks. She's trying to muster the energy to be afraid when she sinks back under.

* * *

She's standing in a dark- room isn't the right word. Cave, maybe. She's standing in front of a rough wall, clearly carved from some type of earth. She's raising a hand to examine it through touch when she hears a low, rumbling laugh behind her. It's sinister, and though it doesn't really startle her for some reason, it _does_ scare her.

She turns slowly, meeting the gaze of a being far larger than she. It- he?- can only be one thing. She's never met him before, but he's been described to her in horrified detail when the Doctor wakes up in a panic out of a nightmare one night.

Satan, she names him. He's enormous, just as the Doctor described, and crimson and black with the horns of a ram. The Doctor remembered him as being chained down, but this beast in front of her is quite free, though he doesn't approach.

He continues laughing as she stares, sizing him up. "The valiant child," he says once he's reigned in his mirth. "Pitiful. I hoped for more."

"What do you want?" Rose snaps. She's terrified but strangely impatient. She's late for something but she doesn't remember what, and if he's going to kill her and send her to hell- wait, is she _in_ hell?- he should just get on with it.

"You _know_ what I want," he assures her. The Doctor hadn't described him as being so calm, so calculating, but she supposes that his behavior depends on the fears of the poor soul before him.

"No," she says resolutely. She isn't refuting his statement; he obviously intends to ferry her from one life into a much darker next life. No, she's telling him that he's not going to be doing that.

At this, he roars with laughter again. He steps forward once and slams a closed fist down on Rose's right. The ground shakes so hard that she loses her balance and lands on her bum.

"He believed in you," the devil informs her, shaking his horned head in mock disappointment. "I can't see why."

Suddenly, Rose is furious, and she fights to get back to her feet. "No," she repeats. "No!" This time she's the one who's stepping forward. She walks up to him, standing directly in front of his big, ugly face- she thinks this with a certain amount of childish pettiness. "You don't control me. You were wrong before and you're wrong now! I didn't die in battle. I'm _not_ dying now!"

Something switches in her foe because suddenly he's opening his mouth and roaring so loudly that she's blown backwards by the force of his breath. She is flung off of a cliff and she closes her eyes as she falls, waiting for impact.

* * *

When her eyes flutter back open, she isn't falling at all, and the space she's in is unexpectedly bright. She blinks a few times, her eyelids crusty and sticky. Once her eyes have adjusted to the light, she finds that she's in a hospital room. In addition to the heart monitor that has been her one constant for who-knows-how-long, she can also hear a faint snoring.

It only takes a moment to discover that the source is the Doctor, who is in a chair next to her bed and is fast asleep with his head on his arms on the side of her bed. He's drooling and his face keeps scrunching up and relaxing as if he's having a strange dream; his hair is absolutely wild and his clothing is rumpled.

It's completely endearing.

She's sure that he could answer the multitude of questions floating through her tired brain, but she doesn't want to wake him as it seems like this may be the first spot of sleep he's had in a long while, so she tries to find out what she can on her own.

She feels neither hot nor cold, which indicates that her fever has broken, leaving her far less shivery than before. The beeping of the heart monitor is regular and steady, not fast enough to indicate distress nor slow enough to cause worry over the functioning of her circulatory system. Her eyes are clearly working again and when she tries to move her fingers and toes, she finds to her delight that while they're a bit slow to respond due to exhaustion and disuse, she can manipulate them at will.

Overall, she feels much improved and quite possibly like she's stopped dying. It's a pleasant change, to be sure.

She's drifted into a light sleep when the timbre of the Doctor's snoring changes, faltering, and then stops completely. There's some sniffling and groaning as he sits up, probably stretching, and the bed creaks as it stops needing to bear his weight.

She cracks an eyelid, watching him. He hasn't noticed yet that she's awake because his face is being vigorously scrubbed by his hands. When he drops them, she's saddened to see that his eyes are red-rimmed and his expression is bleak. She wonders just how badly she's scared him.

She opens her eyes fully and waits for him to notice her consciousness, which it takes a comically long time for him to do. He even looks at her face once or twice as he re-situates himself, but she suspects that he has been long sleep-deprived and is not expecting a change in her condition just then and so he doesn't register that her eyes are open. She decides against speaking, not wanting to startle him. He'll figure out that she's awake soon enough on his own.

Finally, in the third pass of his gaze over her features, he freezes and his eyes jump back to hers. She smiles at him- it's a bit trembly, and probably looks at least halfway like a grimace, but it's a real _smile_ \- and clears her throat. "'Lo," she mumbles, her voice coming out strange and scratchy and too low.

"Rose!" he cries in shock and disbelief and awed joy. He leaps to his feet, moving to walk around the bed and back as he catalogues her body with his eyes, clearly searching for signs of distress. "You're awake! How do you feel? How much do you remember? Do you know where you are? You remember who I am, right? Can you talk? More than just a word, I mean! Can you move? Can you-"

"Doctor," she protests, clearing her throat again and interrupting him. "One thing at a time, please."

At the sound of her voice saying his name, his cheeks split into a brilliant smile. He still hasn't touched her at all, though, and she thinks he might be afraid to. There's something in his expression that's still guarded, and he hovers next to her but doesn't allow his hands any closer. Finally, after some awkward fluttering, his hand settles on her bedrail.

It takes all of her concentration, but she manages to raise a shaky hand of her own to rest on his. Just like that, his cheer dissolves and he sags back into the chair he'd abandoned a few minutes before. _Terrified_ , she thinks, correcting her own thoughts. She hasn't scared him, she's _terrified_ him.

"Are you alright?"

The question surprises him. "Me?" he clarifies, his voice higher and squeakier than before. "Rose Tyler, _you_ are the one who just... I'm alright, I'm always alright."

She ignores this completely. "Are you okay?" she repeats.

He stares at her for a moment. "No," he says finally. There was a time when he wouldn't have trusted her with that answer, and she would have accepted his knee-jerk response at face value.

She releases his hand and wriggles with great effort to the opposite side of the bed. "Come up," she orders, and he wordlessly does as told. He lowers the rail on his side of the tiny hospital bed and climbs in with her, carefully avoiding the wires and tubes that connect every part of her with the machinery above her head.

Once he's settled, he opens his arms, finally initiating contact, and she rolls into his side, snuggling into his shoulder and _finally_ feeling like things are starting to make sense.

"How long was I...?" She isn't sure she wants to know the answer, but she thinks she needs to understand what he's gone through while she has been fighting off the plague.

"Nine days," he says, his voice short.

She winces. She can imagine easily how she must have looked, still except for the occasional tremor and pale and clammy. Non-responsive, burning to the touch. And with the knowledge he possesses of the course of the disease, the survival rates, she's not surprised that he's recovering as much as she is.

Harder to imagine is what she'd do if their positions are reversed.

She starts drawing meaningless patterns agains his chest with one finger in an effort to soothe them both, and it seems to work a bit, because the Doctor lets out a deep sigh and tightens his hold very slightly. "I'm sorry," he murmurs.

She chuckles and she thinks that surprises him because he pulls away slightly to frown at her. "How could this _possibly_ be your fault!?" she asks incredulously. "You weren't even there! The trip definitely wasn't your idea."

He sighs. "Because I knew about the plague, Rose. And I didn't think to warn you."

Rose rolls her eyes. "It won't happen for another three quarters of a century in the other universe. You didn't know that it would be any different here."

He looks impressed. "How did you know that?" he asks, quirking an eyebrow.

"I just know things," Rose says mysteriously, fighting back a smile. "What, are you supposed to be the only one who knows things? Can't you settle for being the smartest one in the room?"

At his slightly wounded look, she giggles, and the sound clears his expression. She's not completely sure, but she thinks it lightens some of this week's darkness for him, as well. "Doctor, I know because I heard you tell Mum that."

"Oh, you could hear?" he asks, sounding like the prospect worries him.

"Sometimes," she answers. "It came and went. So I heard bits and pieces."

"So... so you didn't hear _everything_." She thinks he sounds sketchy. What does he hope she didn't hear?

"No," she confirms slowly. "Why?"

"Oh, no reason," he says, and she thinks with some amusement that he's not a very good liar. His voice always goes a little squeaky when he's uncomfortable, and he clearly is now as he tries to convince her that he'd be perfectly fine with her hearing everything.

"What'd you do?" she asks, her amusement more pronounced now. "Try some alien yodeling magic to cure me? Confess your love to pears? Call me by the wrong name?"

" _No_ ," he says shortly. "Don't patronize me, Rose."

She's laughing now, and after a second, he joins in. "Well, I didn't hear anything too bad," she assures him finally, smirking.

"Not even- I mean, that's good," he says, sounding like he wants to end the conversation.

She pats his chest reassuringly, thinking that he's very strange and that she loves him for it.

"Did you hear me say I loved you?" the Doctor asks after a moment of companionable silence. His voice is softer now, tender. Maybe he wants to believe that he called her back to consciousness, away from the brink of death.

She didn't, but she nods, stretching her neck up. He sees what she's getting at and meets her halfway; their lips press together until they both sigh in relief.

"I did," she says once they part, and he gives her a soft smile, a smile she's never seen him give anyone else.

She's a much better liar than he is, she thinks, but it's because she knows something important... The key to a good lie is to infuse it with a grain of truth.

She may not have heard him tell her he loves her, but she knows it all the same, and that's always been worth fighting for.

* * *

It's another three days before they let her go home, but it's mostly a formality. It's like flipping a switch... She goes from the edge of death to near-perfect health, only a lingering exhaustion and a tendency to get headaches still around to prove that she was ever ill.

This doesn't stop everyone from fussing over her, of course, and it drives her barmy.

By the time she and the Doctor are walking through the front door at home, she wants to be left alone. She's almost wishing she could have her coma back because at least then she'd had some peace.

The Doctor doesn't notice this. He's not as bad as Jackie, but it's just the two of them now, and he's the only one left smothering her. Unfortunately, it doesn't end well.

He carries for her the bag of things that accumulated when she was hospitalized, despite the fact that she insisted she could carry it herself. Then, as soon as they're inside and he's set the bag down, he's all over her again. "Do you need something to drink, Rose? That was a lot of walking. Or do you want to go lay down? Or maybe a bath! A bath would be good, Rose! I can run the water for you!"

She's tried to be patient, she _has_ , but she's lost the ability. "I'm _fine_!" she snarls, a part of her registering the fact that he flinches at what he must see as a sudden attack. "Seriously, Doctor, lay off! I'm more than capable of running a damn bath on my own!" Her voice grows in volume with every word until she's shouting at him... She can feel a headache growing behind her temples and it makes her wince.

It's not fair, she _knows_ it's not, but she doesn't like to be coddled and she hasn't interacted with a single person since she woke up who has done anything but... And unfortunately for the Doctor, he's the only one to take her frustration out on when she snaps.

He looks hurt, and a bit of guilt rises in her chest, but she can't take it back now. "Okay," he says quietly. "I'll just unpack the bag, then."

She wants to apologize, but she really does need some space and her head is aching worse and he is right, a bath might help... So she whirls around and marches to the ensuite.

She turns the water on, sets it to the optimum temperature, and sits down to wait for the tub to fill. Now that her anger is diffused somewhat by her solitude, the guilt is getting worse and worse, as is her headache.

She decides to go back out in order to both apologize to the Doctor and grab paracetamol to take for her headache. As she opens the door to the loo, though, she sees something that makes her stomach fall to her feet.

Sitting neatly outside the door are a glass of water and a box of paracetamol.

She's incredibly ashamed of herself and she feels terrible. She knows that she's hurt the Doctor's feelings and even so, he's taking care of her. Her eyes fill with tears and she makes use of the medicine and the drink before setting them aside and leaving to find the Doctor.

He's sitting on the sofa skimming a magazine and he looks up at her entrance. He gives her a small smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes, which just makes her feel _worse_ , because he's _still_ being kind when he should be yelling.

"I'm sorry," she offers, her voice tiny. She's standing a few feet from him, hesitant to go any closer.

"It's fine," he says, but it sounds like an automatic answer and she notices that he isn't really inviting her to move toward him.

"No, it's not. You didn't deserve to be snapped at and you _certainly_ didn't deserve to be yelled at. You were just trying to make sure I was alright." She feels very tired and disgusted with herself. Maybe she should give up on this for now, go take her bath, and figure out a way to make it up to him.

Just as she's deciding to do that, though, his expression softens into something more genuine and he pats the sofa next to him. She doesn't hesitate, plopping down beside him with a sigh. His arm goes around her waist and she leans against him, burrowing her head. "I really am sorry," she whispers.

She can't see his face anymore, but there's a smile in his voice. "I know. You've had a rough few weeks, love. It's alright." His hand runs up and down her arm, and she's not sure if it's the paracetamol or the Doctor's influence, but the pounding in her head is lessening by the minute, leaving her sleepy.

She remembers quite suddenly, though, that the water is still running, and she pulls back after one last nuzzle. It'll overflow if she doesn't turn it off soon. She stands up and offers him a hand and a small smile. "Come with me?" she asks.

"Always," he replies. His fingers lace with hers and he beams at her. Apparently, all _is_ forgiven.

Once in the bathroom and undressed, the Doctor climbs into the tub first. Rose is in next, settling back against him and closing her eyes. "Love you," she murmurs.

The Doctor plants a kiss on the top of her head. "And I love you," he says softly in return. His arms wrap around her to rest comfortably under her breasts, and she feels herself getting drowsy all over again. Apparently he notices, because he chuckles. "You can sleep if you need to, Rose. Don't stay up on my account. I won't let you drown."

She nods, letting the hot water relax her muscles and squeezing his knee in thanks with one hand. "It's over now," she mumbles. "You can stop worrying over me."

She feels his laughter against her back and it brings a sleepy smile to her face. "Rose Tyler, what makes you think I'll ever stop worrying over you?"

"Doctor, what makes you think I'll ever stop getting irrationally angry about it?" she retorts, not bothering to open her eyes.

"Ah, well, do as you must," the Doctor answers gravely, his fingers absentmindedly stroking her ribs.

Rose breathes out a faint laugh and drifts off.

* * *

The first place they go when the baby TARDIS is ready is to Uxan's sister planet, which is currently inaccessible to alien visitors because it's under the control of a dictator. This doesn't stop Rose and the Doctor, however, from sneaking in to harvest the plant necessary to manufacture the cure to the plague that nearly killed Rose.

He tells her that back in their old universe, the discovery of the cure is a fixed event, which is unfortunate for those who are destined to suffer and die in the seventeen years between the plague's onset and its eventual eradication.

Here, though... Here they can make a difference.

* * *

Rose is invited to another festival on Uxan. This one is in honor of her and the Doctor delivering the cure.

They have a wonderful time with the Uxanites, celebrating in the local style (and the Doctor _does_ love the banana casserole, as it turns out).

The Doctor has a bit too much of the cherry wine flowing freely and admits to Rose that he was afraid that she heard him crying. For some reason, he expects that she'll think less of him for indulging in something that he claims is so human.

Rose once again employs her diplomatic lying skills and assures him that she heard no such thing.

All is well.


End file.
